Alaska pollock (myeongtae)

Myeongtae is the Alaska pollock, a slender member of the cod family now classified by NOAA as Gadus chalcogrammus (older Korean references use Theragra chalcogramma). The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture describes it as a cold-current fish of the East Sea, once caught most heavily off South Hamgyeong Province, and distinguishes it from true cod by its slimmer body and slightly jutting lower jaw. The name is said to join Myeongcheon, a Hamgyeong county, with the surname of a fisherman called Tae, a story recorded in the 19th-century Imha pilgi.

Few fish change names so readily. Fresh pollock is saengtae and frozen pollock dongtae; dried pollock is bugeo, the name the fisheries scholar Seo Yu-gu already gave the dried fish in the 19th century. Hwangtae is pollock hung outdoors through winter in the mountains, where it freezes by night and thaws by day until the flesh turns spongy and golden. Kodari is gutted and only half-dried, sold strung on a cord, and nogari is young pollock, sold dried. The Korean Food Composition Table carries separate entries for most of these forms, including the darker meoktae.

Pollock fishing grew into one of Korea's great fisheries in the late Joseon period, helped by the freeze-drying method that let a huge winter catch be stored and shipped; dried pollock became indispensable at weddings, funerals and ancestral rites. After division, the main grounds lay in the North, and South Korean catches later collapsed, partly because young nogari were caught heavily. Domestic pollock fishing has been fully banned since 2019, so the pollock eaten in Korea is imported: frozen fish has long come from abroad, chilled fresh pollock came mainly from Japan, and the first fresh Russian shipment arrived at Donghae in 2023. Hwangtae is still made the old way: Yongdae-ri in Inje County, Gangwon, the country's largest drying ground, began production in the early 1960s with refugees from Hamgyeong and supplies roughly 70 percent of the nation's hwangtae, drying it on wooden racks from about December to April.

In the kitchen, fresh and frozen pollock go into soups and stews, while bugeo is torn into shreds for bugeo-guk, a clear soup eaten in winter and as a hangover cure. The roe is salted as myeongnan-jeot and the guts as changnan-jeot, and the liver was once pressed for oil; as the Encyclopedia of Korean Culture puts it, almost nothing of the fish is wasted.

• Lean protein: Raw pollock supplies about 17 g of protein per 100 g with less than 1 g of fat, and dried bugeo concentrates that protein several times over by weight.
• Low in mercury: The FDA/EPA advice on eating fish lists pollock among its "Best Choices," the lowest-mercury group, suitable for two to three servings a week during pregnancy and breastfeeding.
• Fish allergy: Fish is one of the nine major food allergens under U.S. law. Fish sauces, broths and dried pollock snacks can all contain it.
• Watch the prepared forms: Myeongnan-jeot and changnan-jeot are salt-cured, and seasoned dried pollock strips are a different product from plain fish; check labels for sodium.